Farmers will take to the fields to begin planting the new corn crop in a few weeks in the wake of a year that saw prices jump way up and then come back down. Iowa Corn Growers Association president, Gary Edwards of Anamosa, doesn’t expect five-dollar a bushel prices this year.
Edwards says he still sees a good chance of the price staying above four-dollars a bushel. He says that could be wrong, but the experts he’s talked too have said they expect commodity prices to remain relatively strong. He thinks markets are going to be "stable to pretty strong in this coming year."
Julius Schaaf, of Randolph, is optimistic prices will stay strong. Schaaf doesn’t expect a run up in prices again this year, because he says a lot of outside investors in the commodities market got burned. "And it didn’t matter whether it was oil, or coal or copper or aluminum or gold…every commodity that got driven up by wild speculation, and those guys got taught a lesson, Schaaf says.
Schaaf says a couple of factors back his confidence in the future. He says farming is a strong production base as the world needs food, and the ethanol production policies are still in place.
Bruce Rohwer of Paulina says while corn prices did jump up, things evened out over the year. Rohwer says he talked with a local elevator and the average of sales came in at just over four dollars a bushel for the entire year, which he says shows not all farmers captured the high prices in July.
All three made their comments in a conference call with the media set up by the Iowa Corn Growers Association.